POLL: Top 5 Military Geniuses (Round 2B)

To me, a military genius is one who sees the overall strategic goal and engages in the actions necessary to achieve it. Everybody else is merely "pretty good in a fight."

Napoleon made HUGE blunders that any decent military genius would have told him to NEVER do… like the march on Moscow, etc.. And he lost, especially once he faced solid, decently disciplined and led opposition. History has long proven that ANYONE can run amok over Europe… until you hit the parts of Europe who WON'T be run over. That's where military mettle truly gets tested.

Similarly, Hannibal put himself and his troops in a strategic situation with no hope of victory over the long haul. He was great at battles, especially against blundering idiots, but when it came to winning a war and protecting his people, he was completely incompetent and fairly simply out done.

Washington led a poorly supplied, poorly trained, and highly factional body of constantly dwindling men to victory over the most professional armies (Britian and Hesse) of his day. He didn't gain any effective allies for nearly three years, and STILL kept his army in the field, even after suffering devastating losses… and followed up those losses with battlefield victories, more than once. On gaining allies (who, let's be serious, were well supplied but not necessarily well trained or well led), he used them to great effect. He also faced high caliber opponents— Cornwallis was no slouch.

Like a sports ranking, sometimes it's about "strength of schedule," too.